POEM OF THE WEEK: ALLISON ADAIR

Allison Adair

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Week Six of the Fire

after Aimee Nezhukumatathil

 

I have faith in the spindle of an aspen.
I have faith in its sugar-drenched bark, in the scorched-butterfly
bruise left by an elk’s incisors. I have faith in the tree’s skeleton
branch, in the flat stems helping each leaf survive the whiplash of mountain wind, I have
faith in anything with a steady tremble. In light that leaks through.

I, too, once trusted the itch of a velvet antler
to carry my hunger toward a grove. I trusted
something—instinct, desire, the buck’s lung-shaped tracks—to keep me moving
through the fire, through scarves of molten citrine wafting in a vaulted sky, which is to say
out from under your body, beyond the memory of its long, easy weight,
its stack of ashen bones.
 
The fire blooms into its sixth week.
 
My faith grows heavy, a cloud baggy with grim rain.

 

 

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Allison Adair’s recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best American Poetry (2018), Iron Horse Literary Review, Kenyon Review Online, North American Review, South Dakota Review, Sou’wester, and ZYZZYVA; and have received the Pushcart Prize (2019), the Florida Review Editors’ Award, the Orlando Prize, and first place in Mid-American Review’s Fineline Competition. Originally from central Pennsylvania, Adair now lives in Boston, where she teaches at Boston College and Grub Street.